


but we thought we were bigger

by an_officer_and_a_gallagher (punk_rock_reject)



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Abuse, Child Abuse, Homophobic Language, M/M, Mickey-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 05:40:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9642992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punk_rock_reject/pseuds/an_officer_and_a_gallagher
Summary: The life and times of Mickey Milkovich; a pre-canon exploration of Mickey's character.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Lukas Graham's 7 Years (because it gives me serious Milkovich feelings). I might add another chapter or two to this, and I'm not completely happy with how I ended this, but enjoy!

Mickey’s ten, staring down at the casket that contains his mother – deathly pale, and _cold_ in a way she never was in life – as his uncles and father shovel dirt into the grave. He doesn’t cry as he watches, he’s learned better than that already in his short life, but Iggy’s sniffling behind him, too quietly for their father to hear. Mandy’s got her face buried in their Aunt Rande’s dress, whimpering, but she’s a girl, so she’s allowed to cry. Colin, Tony and Jamie all look stone-faced, but Mickey thinks he can see Colin’s bottom lip wobbling. He reaches out, curls a small hand around his brother’s wrist, feels the scratchy material of the thick winter coat that he’s going to inherit when Iggy grows out of it, if it hasn’t fallen apart at the seams by then. Colin doesn’t look at him, can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the snarl on their father’s face as he puts his wife six feet under, but he turns his wrist, gripping Mickey back just as tightly. His hands are shaking.

Mickey can’t stop thinking about how his mother had looked when he’d found her.

Mouth slack, eyes glazed over, Nadiya Milkovich had looked like a skeleton. A face that had been beautiful once, the most beautiful face Mickey had ever seen, had been emaciated and covered in bruises and scabbed over cuts – cuts from his father’s rings, from her face bouncing against the linoleum, from a beer bottle that had almost blinded her in one eye. Her skin had been so pale and thin that it was almost translucent and Mickey had let his shaking legs carry him over to the armchair she was slumped in. Her hair – once shiny and soft and Mickey’s safe place to just hide away and _breathe_ – had been stringy and greasy in the way he knows now are telltale signs of a fucking junkie. Not that he blames her, now, for keeping herself so fucked up that she couldn’t feel the abuse, at the end. But he’d been angry, then, angry and fucking terrified, when he couldn’t shake her awake no matter how much he tried. He’d checked her pulse, the way Jamie had taught him to after the first time he’d found her passed out on the floor in a puddle of her own vomit, and it just...hadn’t been there.

He’d screamed loud enough to rouse his father from his drunken stupor and earned himself an angry red welt on his cheek for his trouble – for being “a little pussy”.

Mickey glances up at the priest. He’s a wrinkly old fucker with papery skin and a raspy voice that grates on every single one of Mickey’s nerves the longer the boy has to stand there while a chill he won’t shake for years sinks into his bones, listening to him drone on in Ukrainian about the _devoted mother, loving wife_ whose body he’s committing to the ground, ash in Mickey’s mouth and dust stinging his eyes. And that’s all Nadiya Milkovich is to this man, a body, another name to rattle off from his list. He’ll never know her as the real, tangible mother Mickey’s had ripped away from him. It makes him instantly and inexplicably furious. Colin turns wide, watery eyes on him as he feels the rage shake through his little brother and he drags Mickey forcefully in against his side as the silent sobs begin to wrack his small body, turning them slightly, as if to shield Mickey from Terry’s wrathful gaze. Mickey tries to focus on the hand his brother has planted firmly on the back of his head, all the better to hide Mickey’s traitorous tears, but all he can feel is the ghost of his mother’s touch, wiping the tears from his cheeks. He thinks he hears her voice on the wind for a moment and that only makes him collapse further into Colin’s side, burying his face in the fucking shitty coat he’s going to inherit, that’s never going to fit him. 

Colin hustles him away as quickly as he can once the actual burial is over, Terry either buying his bullshit excuse about needing to get the littler ones out of the cold or not giving a fuck – Mickey’s money would be on the latter. Iggy and Tony both trail after them, looking lost. Mandy and Aunt Rande have disappeared, and Mickey aches with the knowledge that he won’t see his baby sister for a few days. Jamie’s crouched by the freshly filled grave when Mickey throws a last glance back. His eldest brother’s head is bowed, his shoulders shaking. Mickey’s struck with a sudden, vicious thought of _that isn’t right, she wasn’t even_ your _mama, she was_ mine, and it makes his stomach churn; he thinks he might puke and stumbles a bit, Colin dragging him along. He’s being unfair. She wasn’t just Mickey’s. She loved all of them, even though Jamie and Tony and Colin weren’t her kids, not by birth or by blood. But now...now she can’t love any of them. Now they don’t have anyone who loves them.

Mickey vomits all over his shoes.

\--

Mickey’s five, seeing his father hit his mother for the first time. Terry’s roaring at her, spittle flying and face blotchy red, looking like a monster from one of Mickey’s dog-eared, hand-me-down picture books, and he takes a threatening stagger-step towards where Iggy is huddled in the corner and sobbing. His brother is clutching his face, blood dripping onto his favourite Ninja Turtles shirt as it oozes from between his fingers. Nadiya throws herself into Terry’s path, screaming about never laying his fucking hands on her fucking children again, and Terry raises a hand and backhands her so hard across the face that she loses a tooth. Mickey shrinks away from where he’s crouched in front of his bedroom door when his father begins stomping around the living room, yelling about respect and what Nadiya owes him, and he throws any empty bottles within reach, all of them shattering against the wall inches from where his wife is slumped. Eventually, he slams the front door behind him, and Mickey waits until he hears the car screech away from the curb before he scrambles out of his room and over to his mother’s side. Iggy’s sobs have subsided into whimpers, high whines of pain and misery that make him sound like a kicked dog.

“Mama,” he hiccups, voice thick, and Nadiya reaches out a hand for him, the other drawing Mickey in to tuck against her side. Mickey can feel his brother shaking violently when he reaches out a hand to clutch at his shirt, Iggy clumsily squeezing his hand in return. “Hurts,” Iggy moans, the gash on his cheek from where Terry’s belt buckle had clipped him still bleeding sluggishly, and Nadiya hushes him gently. There’s blood dribbling from the side of her mouth that she wipes at impatiently with the back of her hand, like she doesn’t have the time for her own pain.

“Shh, my big, strong boys don’t cry, hmm?” she murmurs in a voice that shakes and Mickey muffles his frightened sobs into her shoulder. He doesn’t feel very big, or strong. He wasn’t big or strong enough to protect Iggy, or his mama. Daddy had hurt her, had hurt Iggy, and he chokes out as much between heaving gasps. “Your daddy loves us,” Nadiya tells them, voice suddenly hard and full of conviction; silk hiding steel, his mother, “He only hits me because I do not show him respect. A wife must respect husband. _He loves us,”_ she repeats softly, in Ukrainian this time, and Mickey believes her then, with his whole heart, has no reason to doubt this woman who is everything to him, who has never lied to him. He can’t know, then, that the words are a well-practiced lie she tells herself at night, when Terry’s sour breath is hot on her neck and he’s squeezing his arms so tightly around her that there’s a painful hitch in her breathing.

Mickey believes his mother a little less every time it happens after then and he wonders why he ever did at all by the time he’s eight and watching the light slowly leave her eyes, Terry’s hands wrapped around her throat. Mickey has nightmares about her ragged gasps – _like she’s trying to swallow glass_ – for weeks, wakes up to Mandy’s tiny hand pressed against his mouth to muffle his screams. Their mother wears the necklace of mottled bruises like a war wound, pressing her fingertips into one of the purple-black blotches until tears spring to her eyes and her face scrunches in pain. She doesn’t let the tears fall, won’t give Terry even that small bit of satisfaction. She starts disappearing more and more after that, something’s she’s been doing once every month or so for as long as Mickey’s been alive. He doesn’t know where she goes, so he asks Jamie if he can come with him when his eldest brother goes to get her one time.

That’s the first time he visits a crackhouse.

The smell is unbelievable. Mickey almost throws up as the stench of piss, puke and unwashed bodies threatens to overwhelm him, and his grip on the back of Jamie’s jacket is white-knuckled. Hands grab at him from everywhere and it feels like he’s suffocating, being pulled under a churning sea of emaciated corpses come to something not quite life. The sound of his heart slamming against his ribcage is loud, even over the pathetic moans of the junkies sprawled all over the floor or on the hastily constructed cots shoved into every corner, propped up against water stained walls. Jamie’s huge hand closes around his upper arm and he drags Mickey up flight after flight of stairs, just pulling harder when the boy stumbles. They find her on the top floor, a blanket draped over her head like a mourning shroud, and Jamie has to sling her over his shoulder like so much deadweight. His face is a stone mask of cold indifference. Icy tendrils wrap around Mickey’s heart and _squeeze_ until his breath is stuttering out of him and tears are blurring his vision. He digs the heels of his palms hard into his eyes to stifle them before Jamie can see.

–  _crying is for pussies and fags_ , _don’t ever let me catch you pulling that shit, boy_ –

But Jamie isn’t looking, he’s already striding purposely back down the stairs, expecting Mickey to follow him. Mickey doesn’t know now, can’t know, that Jamie’s going to be the one following him one day, he and Tony trailing after their brother like attack dogs on a leash, ready to be set loose on anyone who has incurred their family’s wrath.

But for now, it’s Mickey who trips over himself so as not to be left behind.

\--

Mickey’s nine and halfway to dead before anyone notices. Mandy’s the one who finds him, soaked in sweat and shaking so violently his sister thinks he’s having a seizure or some shit. He doesn’t remember much of that night, really only the bits and pieces his siblings have filled in over the years and fuck knows he can’t trust those assholes to tell him anything right, but he has a vague recollection of Colin carrying him miles through the fucking snow, Iggy stumbling along behind them and towing a sniffling Mandy by the hand. He has a very clear picture of his usually laidback brother snarling in the nurse’s face at the free clinic when she tells them to wait their turn and of Aunt Rande sweeping in like a fucking hurricane, leaving order instead of chaos in her wake as she barks orders at the stunned woman. He remembers jolting awake every few hours, disoriented and panicked, voice hoarse as he yells for his mother and vision bleary as he tries to work out where the fuck he is.

The first time he wakes up clearheaded and not feeling like scorpions have been nesting in his fucking mouth, Iggy informs him that DCFS are taking them away from Terry, for the second time, and that Mickey’s going to be fostered out with Mandy, while he and Colin are going into a group home. Jamie’s too old for the system to do shit about him, and Tony’s with Terry on a run. Colin and Iggy had only avoided being dragged along instead of their cousins because neither of them had been home at the time. He asks Iggy where mom is and Iggy just shrugs, staring down at his scuffed, fourth-hand sneakers as he kicks his feet back and forth. It doesn’t surprise Mickey that she’s fucked off, Terry’ll probably find her in the same crackhouse they always do when it’s time for him and Nadiya to get their kids back. They’ll get custody again, they always fucking do because the system couldn’t give less of a shit about the Milkovich kids. Mickey and Mandy end up with Aunt Rande, and as much as she complains about them being “inconvenient, impudent little shitstains”, she loves them and she takes care of them until a fresh-faced, tearful Nadiya comes to collect her babies. Mickey pretends not to see Mandy flinch away from her, her tiny fists clenched in Aunt Rande’s shirt.

Terry, a six-pack and a line of coke deep, doesn’t appear to have missed them, but Mickey already knows that Daddy doesn’t give a shit beyond having his little helpers back in time for his next drug/weapons run. A bruised Colin and a battered Iggy arrive home a couple days after Mickey and Mandy, and Terry sneers when Nadiya insists on cleaning up Iggy’s busted lip and giving Colin Ibuprofen for the eye that’s so swollen he can’t open it. Mickey climbs into Iggy’s bed that night, like he hasn’t done for-fucking-ever, fists clenched in the old t-shirt of Tony’s his brother’s sleeping in, and knees tucked into the backs of Iggy’s as he curls up behind him. Mandy isn’t far behind, and she plasters herself to Iggy’s front, unused to sleeping alone after years of sharing a bed with Mickey. Iggy doesn’t say a word, not even when he trips over Colin sprawled out on the ground next to his bed in the morning, fingers curled around the ankle Mickey’s got dangling off the bed.

\--

Mickey’s fourteen and finding out his brother isn’t as much of his father’s son as he thought he was.

Iggy and his friend, TJ, have been smoking up in the living room all day, laughing about fuck-all too loudly and eating all the shit in the fridge and the cupboards when the munchies hit them. Dad’s gonna have a fucking conniption if he comes home and finds the house completely cleaned out of anything edible, so he’ll either have to go get groceries, or send Mandy to do it when she gets home. Mickey’ll probably end up doing it, he needs smokes anyway. Mickey’s so far been doing anything he can to ignore the stoner morons – playing his music as loudly and obnoxiously as he can, booting up the decrepit family laptop and attempting to find some straight porn that’s actually going to get him off – but he can still hear them giggling like little girls, and he’s getting antsy about putting off this errand run for too long. They’re gonna heckle him and needle at him until he joins in whatever stupid fucking thing they’re doing if he goes out to get smokes now though. He doesn’t deem it safe to emerge from his room until they’ve fallen silent.

He was wrong, he was so, _so_ wrong about it being safe. TJ and Iggy don’t appear to have heard his door open, nor have they noticed him loitering in his doorway. No, TJ’s too busy slipping off the couch and dropping to his knees in front of Iggy, grinning up at him with a goofy expression mirroring his brother’s own. And Mickey’s expecting his brother’s grin to morph into an angry snarl, expecting to hear _faggot fuckin’ queer pillow biter_ as the blonde reaches for the button of Iggy’s jeans. But Iggy just spreads his legs wider, rests his hand on TJ’s head with a sigh, fingers carding through his hair more gently and with more care than Mickey’s seen his brother put into anything, ‘cept for maybe rolling his joints. It’s pretty obvious they’ve done this shit before.

“Fuckin’...c’mon, man,” Iggy chuckles, voice raspy from an afternoon of puffing on blunts and TJ scoffs quietly, lips pressed to his brother’s stomach where he’s rucked up Iggy’s grubby wifebeater. It’s all very fucking casual, like Mickey’s world isn’t fucking imploding, falling down around his ears as he watches his brother banter with the dude about to suck his dick. Iggy can’t be a fag, he just can’t be. Mickey’s seen him with plenty of girls, walked in on more shit than he can ever bleach out of his brain. But...that doesn’t mean shit, really, does it? Mickey fucks girls periodically, to keep his dad and his brothers off his back, but that doesn’t stop him from fingering himself in the shower and wishing it was _more,_ or from stashing issues of Macho under the loose floorboard under his bed—holy fuck. Mickey has the bizarre, entirely inappropriate urge to laugh as he realises that he probably _didn’t_ lose all the ones he thought he’d misplaced while stoned or shitfaced, Iggy had probably taken them. The sound of shuffling from the couch strips him of any and all urge to laugh and he doesn’t stay, can’t stay, to watch Iggy get his hummer. Mickey jams a chair under his door handle and ignores his sister when she screeches about needing to use the bathroom, an hour later.

Mickey doesn’t _get_ it until he comes home from school one day, a couple of weeks of awkwardly avoiding his older brother later, and stumbles upon Iggy getting blown by some pretty brunette girl from down the street; maybe his brother just bats for both fuckin’ teams, maybe Iggy just doesn’t fuckin’ care about _where_ his BJs come from, as long as he’s gettin’ ‘em. He never says anything to Iggy about it, because he doesn’t want to get in a needless fistfight with his brother and to end up having to listen to Iggy bitch about bleeding all over his clothes when Mickey kicks his ass, but the revelation that he’s _not the only one_ gives him a new sort of tentative confidence. It means that he lets himself be okay with getting off to the thought of getting blown by a dude, instead of trying to force it with images of Karen Jackson or some other skank from school. That always left him more frustrated than anything, unable to take the edge off no matter how much he jerked it, but Mickey blows embarrassingly quick the first time he lets his mind conjure up Robbie Carter from his class on his knees for him, then naps for a couple hours, blissed out and relaxed.

Of course, the consequence of this is that Mickey, being the healthy fourteen-year-old he is, can’t keep his hand out of his pants. He laughs for-fucking-ever the first time Mandy barges in without knocking – and fuck’s sake, somebody needs to fucking fix the other toilet in this fucking house, people can’t be using his all the fuckin’ time – and gets an eyeful.

Mandy finds it less amusing.

\--

Mickey’s fifteen, getting fucked in a dirty alley. The guy is older than him, eighteen or nineteen, and there’s a hand in his hair pulling so hard that Mickey’s afraid he’s gonna get a fuckin’ chunk ripped out. He’s not adverse to the nails scratching none-too-gently at his scalp, the pinpricks of pain making the whole thing better, somehow, but this asshole either needs to chill the fuck out a little or start really fucking him. The bare skin on his forearms drags against the rough brick he’s braced them on and he’s gritting his teeth so hard that he can hear them grinding together every time he’s jolted forward by another overzealous thrust. There’s no rhythm to this, and it’s hard and fast, but fuck, it’s _good._ Better than his own tentative fingers by a long way, and there’s no fucking contest between this and banging a chick, and Mickey knows for sure what he’s dreaded is true for the longest time; there’s never gonna be anything better than how taking it like this makes him feel. He’s thrown it in a few guys, and yeah, it gets him off, but not like this. There’s nothing like this. He ignores the cold dread that wants to settle in the pit of his stomach and tries to focus in on the task at hand again.

The guy’s breathing raggedly behind him, fingers absolutely digging bruises into Mickey’s hips as he slams into him, and Mickey lets his head hang, eyes squeezing closed as his gut clenches in the familiar, telltale way. “’m fuckin’ close,” he grits out from between clenched teeth and the guy grunts in acknowledgement. Mickey knows he’s not gonna be getting any help to finish himself off, so he closes a hand around himself, tugging without any sort of rhythm – he’s just trying to get this done as fast as possible. This might be good, but they’re on the fucking Southside, closer to being out in the open than he’s comfortable with, and they need to wrap this up before anyone sees them. Mickey’s not in the mood to crack the skulls of any fag bashers tonight. The guy stills suddenly, yanking Mickey back against him hard, shuddering as he finishes with a low groan. Mickey snarls as he pulls out, twisting around when he hears the sound of a zipper. “The fuck you think you’re doing, fuckwit?” he demands and the guy just flips him off, adjusts himself in his jeans and takes off out of the alley.

“Mother _fucker!”_ Mickey spits, bracing a hand against the wall and tipping his head back as he tries to bring himself off. It’s not working and he slams his palm against the brick a couple times before tucking himself back into his underwear and hiking his jeans back up. “Fuckin’ _asshole.”_

He’s gonna be pissed off for the rest of the night if he doesn’t find someone else to get off with, and he’s not really in the mood now so he begins the trek back to the house. He’ll grab a six-pack, get shitfaced, pass out. Same as any other fuckin’ night. Tony’s on the couch, bowl of cereal in his lap and an old rerun of The King of Queens on TV, when Mickey walks in the front door. The brothers grunt a greeting at each other and Tony gestures for Mickey to sit with him, patting the free space on the couch.

“C’mere, little brother.”

“The fuck for?” Mickey demands, even as he drops onto the couch beside his much bigger brother, their knees bumping together. He notices Mandy curled up in the armchair, the comforter from her bed draped over her. Her socked feet are poking out from the bottom. The socks are black and covered in little white stars, fraying and stretched thin over her big toes. Mickey remembers stealing them for her for her last birthday.

“Help me keep an eye on her,” Tony mumbles, nodding in Mandy’s direction and Mickey shifts uncomfortably on the spot; he knows what that means. Means Terry was hammered and couldn’t keep his hands to himself, so Tony was running interference and he doesn’t feel like leaving her alone just yet. Terry ain’t home – Mickey can’t smell him; the fat fuck has a very distinctive stench that follows him around the house and lingers – but that doesn’t settle his nerves any. Mandy insists that she can handle herself, is handling it herself, and usually, Mickey would believe her. But this is _Terry._ Mandy can’t handle Terry, none of them can, Mickey’s had enough cuts, bruises and broken bones in his life to attest to that. But especially not Mandy. His Mandy. She’s so much smaller than their father, his meaty paws easily encircling her tiny, fragile wrists. Mickey’s always worried about how effortlessly Terry could snap those bird bones of hers, but Mandy’s smarter than to let him get ahold of her. Something they all learned from their ma; if he gets his hands on you, that’s it. There’s no fighting that ogre when he’s got that iron grip on you. Jamie and Tony don’t have to worry about that as much, they’re fucking giants, but Mickey and Mandy have always been on the smaller side.

Mandy stirs in her sleep when Mickey touches her shoulder gently, but she doesn’t wake. Just rolls towards him with a soft sigh, leaning into the touch in a way she probably wouldn’t if she was awake. Mickey hadn’t even realised he’d gotten up and moved, but he settles with his back against the armchair, legs stretched out in front of him. He falls asleep like that, too, neck bent at an awkward angle that’s going to make him sore and crabby all the next day. At some point during the night, Mandy’s hand falls to rest on the top of his head, her fingers sunk into his hair, and Iggy lightly kicks him awake the next morning, rubbing at his eyes and complaining about the lack of cereal.

Mickey flips him off and tells him to take it up with Tony.

\--

Mickey wakes up on the morning of his seventh birthday to the smell of his mother’s banana pancakes wafting in from the kitchen and Mandy sitting on his stomach. She starts bouncing excitedly once she realises he’s awake, and his full bladder doesn’t thank her for it. He shoves at her until she falls sideways onto the bed, scowling. Mickey loves his little sister more than anything, she’s his second favourite person in the whole world – Mama’s his favourite, obviously – but fuck, she can be the most annoying little shit.

“Get _up,_ assface!” she grumbles, kicking him hard in the side and proving Mickey’s point entirely. “Ma made special pancakes for your birthday!”

That reminder is enough to have a grin stretching wide across his face and Mandy latches onto Mickey’s arm with a strength her tiny body belies when he sits up. She plants a smacking kiss on his cheek that has him rubbing at the wet patch and screwing up his nose in disgust, even though he might secretly be a bit pleased.

“Happy Birthday!” Mandy giggles, before clambering over him and running from the room, hollering about him being awake as she goes.

Mickey’s barely had time to disentangle himself from the tangle he’d made of his covers last night – they’d been wrapped around one of his legs and jammed up underneath him uncomfortably and he honestly didn’t know how that had happened – when Iggy and Colin come crashing into his room. Tony lumbers in after them, but thankfully doesn’t throw himself on top of Mickey like his younger brothers did, and Jamie peers around Tony’s girth, grinning at the sight of Mickey and Iggy rolling around and attempting to pummel each other.

“He’s gotta give you your birthday punches!” Colin laughs, lunging for Mickey and catching Iggy around the middle instead when Mickey wriggles away. This is a tradition Mickey could do without; Jamie calls it the Birthday Beatdown, and he claims to have been carrying it out since Tony was five. The duty always falls to the brother above the birthday boy (or girl, in Mandy’s case) in the family hierarchy to dispense the blows. Mickey’s arm always aches for hours after Iggy’s administered the appropriate number of birthday punches. Mickey yowls when Iggy manages to land the first one and Colin cackles. “Got ‘im! Six more to go!”

Six punches, an aching arm and half a wrestling match later, Iggy’s nursing a nasty bitemark on his hand and Colin’s got a bloody nose. Both of them are grinning. Mickey trots out into the living room, head held high, and Mandy cheers when she sees him victorious. She’s sitting up on the counter as their mother bustles about, holding a plate stacked high with perfectly golden-brown pancakes. Mandy swings her feet back and forth, kicking her heels back against the cabinets, which is usually something their mother would scold them for but Nadiya looks like she’s in too good a mood. Tony’s already sat at the table, tapping a fork against his empty plate impatiently, and Jamie’s slouched against the wall, sipping at a cup of coffee.

“Kicked their asses, huh?” he rumbles, and Mickey nods, little chest puffing out with pride.

“Uh huh.”

“Nice work, birthday boy.”

Nadiya chuckles, setting the plate on the table, delivering a swift, sharp smack to Tony’s wrist when he reaches for it and crossing the room to take Mickey’s face in her hands. She kisses his forehead, seven times, and he laughs, trying to squirm out of her grasp because it’s embarrassing, especially with his brothers watching. “My Mikhailo,” she murmurs, running gentle fingers through his hair the same way Mandy does when she can’t get to sleep, “Growing up so fast. _All of you, growing up too fast._ ” She casts a melancholy eye around the room, taking in all of her children. Colin and Iggy are trying to aggravate the other’s injury, Colin howling when Iggy tweaks his busted nose and Iggy hissing when Colin digs his nails into the bitemark. Mandy’s yelling at them to _knock that shit off_ , wearing a scowl that’s a perfect carbon copy of Mickey’s and waving a spatula threatengly in their direction. Tony’s sulking, rubbing at the red mark their mother left on his wrist, and Jamie cuffs him around the ear playfully.

“Ma,” he says, taking a seat at the head of the table – Terry must definitely not be home, not just passed out in his room like Mickey thought, ‘cus _nobody_ sits in Dad’s seat if he’s in the house, “Tony’s starving over here.”

“Then we eat,” Nadiya announces, prying Iggy and Colin apart with a firm grip on their ears and shoving them towards the table. She helps Mandy down from the counter and his sister clambers up onto the chair next to Mickey, nudging his foot with hers and smiling a gap-toothed smile.

“I helped Ma make ‘em,” she tells him proudly, pointing at the pancakes her brothers are now tearing into with relish – Mickey wonders then why it is that he and Iggy are the only ones that call her Mama, he’ll find out years later that it’s because they were the only ones she was any sort of mother to – and bouncing in her seat. Mickey offers her a grin and ruffles her hair, ignoring her shriek of outrage because he knows she’s secretly preening under his praise, the way she always does.

“You better get some ‘fore Tony eats ‘em all.”

\--

Mickey’s ten, and he’s just been kicked out of his Little League game.

 _Totally worth it_ , Mickey thinks as he watches the rest of the game from the dugouts. The coach had said since this was only his second strike he could stay until his dad came to pick him up, which means Mickey’s still gonna be here in a few hours, if Terry remembers at all. His ma was usually the one who came to his games, when she wasn’t too fucked up, but she’s too sick to leave the house most days now. She just lays in bed, barely moving, barely _breathing_ sometimes, her dark hair fanned out across the white sheets like an ink stain. Occasionally, she’ll find the energy to move out into the living room, will spend the day wrapped up in a cocoon of blankets in the armchair, staring blankly at the wall. She’ll ignore any of Mandy’s attempts to engage with her, until Mandy gets frustrated and screams at her to _get the fuck up_. Mandy will always burst into his room, gasping for breath with tears streaming down her face as she wriggles her way into his arms. The thought of Mandy’s broken-hearted sniffles has him itching for a smoke, and his fingers twitch with the urge. Ma had whooped his ass the first time she’d caught him sharing a cigarette with Iggy out on the stoop, and she’d demanded to know how long he’d been smoking. Iggy’d told her that he gave Mickey his first one a couple months ago, and had gotten his ass beat for his troubles as well. That had been before she’d gotten sick.

The crowd roars its approval and Mickey starts as he realises the game is already over. Huh, his team won. Whatever. He doesn’t really give a shit about baseball anyway. He’d only started Little League because all his brothers had done it, all of them except for Colin getting the boot from their teams like Mickey inevitably will. Terry had made Colin quit when he decided that it was taking up too much of Colin’s time – time he could have spent on runs with the rest of them, or dealing and bringing money into the household.

– _a real man’s work_ –

Nevermind the fact that Colin had actually enjoyed baseball, or that he’d been good at it.

Mickey sticks to his corner as the rest of the team stream into the dugouts, hollering and cheering and chattering loudly. None of them so much as glance at Mickey, and he doesn’t care. Fuck ‘em. He’s never liked any of them anyway. The feeling’s always been very much mutual – Mickey’s not unaware of the weight his last name carries, even at the tender age of ten. People are scared of the Milkoviches, for good reason, and a lot of the time, that makes him feel good. He feels strong, and important. It makes him proud, of his family, of himself. People know not to fuck with them. But sometimes...sometimes he hates it. Hates that he can’t make friends because all the other boys don’t wanna play with him for fear of getting the shit kicked out of them if they make him mad, hates that the girls whisper behind their hands about how dirty he is, how he has lice, about his hand-me-down clothes that are so big even some of his teachers can’t hide their amusement. It fucking sucks.

He’s glaring down at the ground, trying to ignore the celebrations going on a few feet away, when a pair of scuffed sneakers enter his line of sight. Mickey’s head jerks up, mouth dropping open and insults gathering on the tip of his tongue. The sight of the scrawny ginger kid smiling softly down at him brings him up short, any harsh words dying before he can fling them at the other boy. Mickey’s mouth snaps shut, his ears feel hot and he has to fight down the ridiculous urge to smile back like a fucking _girl_.

“The fuck do you want?” he barks instead and the kid’s smile doesn’t falter.

“Sorry you didn’t get to finish the game,” he says, and Mickey’s eyes narrow as he squints up at him. He thinks he knows the kid from around the neighbourhood but he can’t put a name to the floppy fringe and freckly face. Wait. Is it...it might be...it’s Gallagher. Yeah, Lip’s brother. Ian. Mickey’s seen them walking home from school together, since the Gallaghers only live two blocks or so away. Frank’s kids. Everybody knows Frank Gallagher. Terry sometimes complains about how _that weasel-faced fuck_ owes him money after he comes staggering home from the Alibi, reeking of booze and slurring his words so badly Mickey wonders if he’s even speaking English. Frank’s reputation as a schemer, a liar, a fucking coward stretches far and wide throughout the Southside, seeping into the streets of Canaryville until it’s just another part of the neighbourhood’s very foundations. Frank Gallagher’s a no-good piece of shit. It’s a fact of life.

Mickey doesn’t like Lip. He’s arrogant, and smarmy, and it pisses Mickey off that he thinks he’s so much better than everyone else just ‘cus he’s _smart._ What fucking good is _smart_ when he’s getting his teeth knocked in by Mickey and his brother because he ran his mouth off, huh? Mickey’s smart in a different way – he can pull a gun apart and put it back together just as easy as Lip can do algebra – and his way, as far as he’s concerned, is the only way that matters when it comes to surviving on the Southside. So, yeah, Lip’s gonna get outta here one day and Mickey’s gonna die here, so what? It doesn’t matter to him one little bit. Mickey wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he ever did get out of the Southside anyway, it’s his home. Mickey belongs here, there’s no doubt about that.

Ian, though, Mickey doesn’t know much about Ian. He knows that the kid follows Lip around like he’s his little shadow, kinda like Mandy used to do before Mickey told her to get lost, and stay lost – he was getting too old to be hanging out with his baby sister, or so Dad said. He knows that Ian’s a shit pitcher but he’s probably the best batter they’ve got. He knows that Lip or his older sister – he thinks her name is Fiona, can’t be sure – picks him up after games most often, although he’s seen Frank around once or twice, and a blonde lady he thinks might be Ian’s mom a couple times. Sometimes the older sister or the maybe-mom has a toddler sitting on her hip, a boy with hair the same colour as Lip’s, or there’ll be a little girl with frizzy red hair like Ian’s. Mickey knows that Ian gets beat up a lot by boys from his year, can even now see the mottled yellow of a healing bruise high up on his cheek. He tries hard to ignore whatever it is in him that softens at the sight, tries to make himself look meaner, scowl harder.

Ian’s smile just seems to get brighter.

“Here,” he says, holding out a Snickers bar, “You can have it. I don’t eat ‘em.”

Mickey glowers at the proffered chocolate bar for a minute before he snatches it out of the other boy’s hand with a muttered, “Whatever.” He’s not gonna thank him, Milkoviches don’t do that shit. Not like people ever give them any reason to anyway. Ian doesn’t look put out by his hostility, not even a little, and Mickey wants to punch the smile off of his face just on principle. What the fuck does he even have to look so happy about? Mickey basically just told him to fuck off and he’s beaming like Mickey told him he won the World Series. Mickey’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead when Ian sits next to him, grinning like a jackass and oblivious to Mickey’s incredulity.

“Was your mommy here watching today?” the redhead inquires, scuffing a sneaker against the ground and scratching at his nose, “I haven’t seen her the last couple games.”

Mickey wants to say _mind your fucking business_ but what actually comes out of his mouth is “She’s sick.” He wants to punch himself in the face now, ‘cus what the fuck? Why did he just blurt that out to Ian fucking Gallagher, of all people? There’s a warm feeling settling in his chest, because Ian apparently cares enough about him to notice things like this, but he crushes it as viciously as he can.

Ian’s face seems to crumple a little with that news, like he actually gives a shit. It makes Mickey squirm in discomfort, because no one but Mandy gives a shit about him. He tears his gaze away from Ian, noticing for the first time that the stands have pretty much emptied, and they’re the last two in the dugouts. They always are. Usually, Ian’s gone a lot sooner than Mickey, who generally gives up waiting on his dad after an hour or two, but it doesn’t look like his sister or his maybe-mom are here yet. “’m really sorry, Mickey,” Ian mumbles, after a while, and Mickey’s face scrunches in a scowl.

“Fuck off,” he grumbles, with less heat than he wanted there to be, which just pisses him off even worse. Ian doesn’t, though, just keeps sitting there and fiddling with a loose thread on his shirt. They don’t talk and Mickey fidgets like he’s tweaking, or somethin’. Jesus, this is probably the longest he’s been around another boy without picking a fight. He doesn’t want to pick a fight with Ian, and that surprises him more than anything. Even while he’s waiting for Ian to say something about how dirty he is, or how stupid, tell him that he was just kidding and he hates Mickey as much as the rest of them, he doesn’t _want_ Ian to. He doesn’t want Ian to give him a reason to hit him, to make him cry like he does all the other boys. Mickey’s never had a friend before and he’s starting to think that’s maybe what Ian wants to be; maybe that’s what _he_ wants to be.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels the wet press of lips against his cheek, mouth falling slack and eyes blowing wide. Ian’s face is as red as his hair, even under all those freckles, when Mickey turns his head to gape at him. “I-I hope your mommy gets better!” Ian stutters out, scrambling up from the bench and backing away from Mickey with speed, like he’s afraid Mickey’s going to deck him, like he probably should. But he doesn’t want to hit Ian, even as his father’s voice hisses _fucking faggot_ in his ears, because Mickey’s never had anyone who wasn’t his mom or his sister kiss him before. Ian _kissed_ him. “Bye, Mickey!” Ian throws over his shoulder, as he runs towards where his sister is waiting for him, gesturing impatiently with a toddler sitting on her hip.

“Bye, Ian,” Mickey mumbles, numb with shock as he rubs at the wet patch on his cheek.

The Snickers bar is still melting in his hands when Jamie comes to pick him up.

\--

Mickey’s thirteen and he’s trying his hardest to prove to his father that he’s the same breed as the rest of his brothers, the same as Terry himself. The needle fucking hurts like a motherfucker, and it hardly looks clean, but his cousin has assured him that’s he done stick-and-pokes like these a million times. Joey did Colin and Iggy’s, and now he’s inking Mickey’s own warning into his skin. His knuckles, once Joey’s finished, will proudly state his intention to FUCK U-UP to anyone who pisses him off – and it’s not an idle threat, either. Mickey’s perfectly capable of caving in somebody’s skull, be it with an aluminium bat or his bare hands, and he’s just as well-trained as any of Terry’s other good little soldiers. That’s the whole reason he’s even getting these stupid fucking tattoos – it’s sure as shit not because he actually wants them. Well. He might, just a little. He’s always thought Iggy’s BEAT DOWN was pretty cool. Not that he’d ever tell Iggy that to his face, no, he’s more likely to sneer at his brother and call him a dumbass.

Colin and Iggy are sat at the other side of the kitchen table, playing Slaps, and Iggy’s elbow jostles the table when he jerks away. Joey’s face twists into a snarl as he yells at the two to fuck off while he works and Mickey feels his stomach clench. He doesn’t want them to leave, wants his brothers to stay and watch him finally prove himself. Mickey’s silently relieved when Colin tells Joey to get fucked and Iggy comes to crouch beside Mickey’s chair.

“Looks good, little bro,” he mumbles, reaching out to muss Mickey’s hair and Mickey almost rips his hands away from Joey to punch Iggy for his troubles, but he remembers himself at the last second. Iggy grins to himself and straightens up to fetch himself and Colin a couple beers from the fridge. Mickey sits, fuming and cursing himself for ever wishing for _more_ of his brothers’ company, until Joey finishes up. He rattles off some aftercare Mickey listens to carefully, snatches Colin’s half-finished beer from his hand and saunters out of the house without another word.

“Fucker!” Colin yells after him and Iggy does get himself punched this time, for daring to laugh at Colin’s misfortune. While his brothers scrap, Mickey stares, transfixed, down at his tattoos. He thinks about what they mean – what they really mean, beyond the obvious threat – and decides that they mark him as what he is, what he’s okay with being for right now; just another Milkovich; a violent, dirty thug with no future and no prospects to speak of. That’s fine, for now, he doesn’t have any ambitions to be anything more than that at the moment anyway.

For now, Mickey doesn’t have a reason to wish he was anybody else – not like he will a couple years from now, when his reason comes in the shape of a redheaded boy who makes Mickey feel free.


End file.
